Survival Of The Fittest

He had no idea what he was drinking, but it went down easy.

((Demetri Futscher continued from Trapped in the Bathroom: Chapter 173 [HD 1080p]))

He probably wasn't drunk, though. He assumed being legitimately drunk off the ass was supposed to be way more of a gross feeling than this, because this, this was some good shit he was on. The more he'd been thinking about it in the past half hour- however long he'd picked up the first beer bottle from the table coupled with a glance over his shoulder- the more he'd realized kinds of things like him just being way too closed off. The more he thought about it, yeah? He was just cucking himself more than anybody was cucking him- he was closing himself off by being too mumbly and stuff. Life wasn't any kind of that bad that he had to awkwardly check out of the proverbial building. Man, he was pretty okay. Nothing wrong that he couldn't fix with some good old elbow grease- just like Dad told him time and time again. Demetri was sorry he hadn't paid the right amount of attention before then.

It was like, this party had a good pulse running through it. Hyperactive type of beat, like the entire population of GHHS was experiencing a heart attack in slow motion. The music still sucked, but honestly he could kind of tolerate the groove even if it was basic drum patterns and shit. The guys were cool, the girls were cute, and if he just let himself go for a quick second maybe he could even walk up to one of those rare pretty smiles and talk to them without all the usual stirring up al dente in the pockets of his jeans.

He was feeling it. He really fucking was. The smile on his lips wasn't even forced for once, when some girl with sharp-hewn bangs and brilliant eyes nodded his way in passing. He could wander around, nod to the music, daydream about the idea of relaxing for a change. Why didn't he feel like this more often? He'd been missing out.

The stairs to the basement were off to one side, he was looking the other way, contemplating some kind of scene that had the people in the kitchen awkwardly streaming out in twos. Someone had hit someone or something like that. Sounded like business Demetri had no part in. He idly played voyeur while leaning with a liberally loose caution against a corner table with some kind of expensive and shiny looking vase and some neat looking flowery plates on it. He played finger drums with the porcelain.

Was that Emmett? Man. Almost looked like the pitiable kind of basket case for once. Demetri couldn't even remember why he'd ever hated that dude.

Jesus the music was loud in the basement. Who the fuck was in charge of the playlist, even? Oh, right. Mikki. Mikki who would murder him if he said anything. Cool cool. Best to shut the fuck up, then.

>> Axel Fontaine continued for a brief moment in time from The History Of Wrong Guys

Party was going on pretty hard downstairs, shitty soundtrack aside for the second. Lot of people, lot of dancing, lot of unattended alcohol. There was a fridge that was picked mostly clean, with the exception of some toilet beer and a couple of Mike's Hard. Those had the advantage of being not alcoholic enough to inebriate anyone heavier than the average fourth grade while still being alcoholic enough that Tristan couldn't complain, so he grabbed a couple. Basically as helpful as getting him water, right? Responsible as fuck. Tristan looked like he was on that edge between ending the night passed out and ending the night passed out in a puddle of vomit, so probably better to take care.

He got up the stairs back to the ground floor without killing himself, which was its own minor miracle. Music was loud everywhere, but now that he'd heard it at top volume it seemed almost muffled here. Or maybe that was the hearing loss kicking in. Whichever. He set his sights on the next set of stairs, hoping Tristan hadn't wandered off in his drunken stupor. Seemed unlikely, considering he didn't seem entirely capable of standing, but hey, he was drunk and stupid. He could crawl out a window or something. Axel'd done worse.

Thing was, he wasn't really looking in front of him. Thing was, he was still kinda caught up thinking about the Tristan thing. Thing was, he shoulder-checked someone hard enough that he lost his grip on one of the drinks. It didn't break, thank fuck, a ground covered in broken glass would be a buzzkill and a half, and he caught it with his foot before it could roll away, but. But, but.

He turned to look at who he'd run into, and of course it fucking was. Why shouldn't it be? It was most definitely that kind of night. It was totally his fault. He was the one who'd spaced out. He'd probably apologize if anyone else, but like... it wasn't. And there was still an angry knot in the pit of his stomach desperate for something to lash out at.

"Tch." He pushed his hair back with his right hand, the one currently lacking a drink. "You're real good at showin' up where no one wants you, Futscher."

And Demetri might have even been willing to forgive this guy in particular, he was that willing to buy into his own good mood.

Axel Fontaine being that kind of no-talent fake hair hypocrite who made all kinds of honest effort into dishonestly pretending he ever had the claim to moral high ground. Demetri had long since been convinced that Fontaine was well aware of the stench of his own bullshit and had continued to lick at the turd through a voluntary surrender to the same liberal pop culture mentality that kept the rest of the GHHS kids contentedly grass fed. It was just that Fontaine was... aggressively bad. Few people in the school with his particular brand of being a walking, steaming hot mess.

Demetri couldn't imagine a time that he'd ever been afraid of Fontaine, though he distinctly remembered he had been. Emphasis on had. Demetri couldn't resist the tide of his own thoughts because it flooded into his brain. Liquid courage, that was the term.

"Or, you're good at walking dick first into places you don't want to be," Demetri shot back. Even he wasn't sure he'd ever heard his voice this baritone composed before. Damn, he fucking liked it. "Rings a bell, something like, your love life?" It's like, jeez, Demetri didn't even care. Spoke volumes to Fontaine's character, didn't it, that the grape vine strangling him by the throat was so casually accessed.

Demetri wasn't budging a fucking inch. Almost considered kicking Fontaine's lost bottle away, but unlike a certain other person wasting this conversation away Demetri wasn't a fucking barbarian with no sense of propriety.

"We've got no issues dude, save the aneurysm for prom."

Hey, the little shit wasn't running away crying for once. Christmas miracle.

Demetri Futscher was the kind of motherfucker who heard "put up or shut up" and chose "none of the above". The kind of motherfucker whose mouth never stopped writing checks his fists would never even try to cash. Which was a hell of a thing when he couldn't drag himself through a sentence without throwing a dart to pick what 4chan-approved target he wanted to piss off. It was pretty incredible that he didn't get his ass kicked more often, but that could probably be put down to his incredible ability to vanish the moment someone was ready to make him answer for his mouth.

Not this time, though. He was drunk, had to be, considering the empty bottle in his hand and considering that he hadn't slinked off into the crowd yet. He was even trying to talk shit, which was kind of like watching a puppy trying and failing to get up on a table. Cute, sort of, but mostly pathetic. What the fuck was he even talking about? Axel idly rolled the bottle on the floor back and forth with his foot.

Was he giving him an out to leave? That was hilarious. If he'd wanted to run off he already would have. Nah, if Nick Ogilvie wasn't gonna show his ass up, he could at least fuck with an easy target for a minute.

"No one less qualified to be talking shit about anyone's love life, man. Let alone mine." He raised an eyebrow, thought about half a second about going in a dangerous direction, and then did, because why the fuck not.

"You still runnin' after my sloppy seconds?"

"Should have put a bet on it. I said walk away and you proceed to do, precisely, 'not that'." The spit-washed dry Corona in Demetri's hand danced a figure eight as Demetri walked himself by the gesture through his own logic. Demetri mumbled loud and proud to himself as Fontaine continued to grasp at straws. "I'd have more dollars than you'd have sense if I bet a buck."

Demetri couldn't actually remember talking this fast before while still feeling sharp. His tongue could actually keep up with his brain and no party in the equation was a handicap. He noticed he was watching the bottle underneath Fontaine's primadonna drag queen heels. Lame. Wasn't even a second thought later that Demetri was firmly glaring Fontaine in the eyes. Not much Demetri could do about the eye bags, but the rest of his gaze percolated a vitality rare to find even when Demetri wasn't typecast as the walking punchline of some shitty cosmic joke.

"...? Eh."

That one took him a moment. His mood was butter smooth but some shit seemed to sink into the fat, like the stuff hidden between the lines. Demetri's brain felt like a runaway train abandoning several stop's worth of passengers. Like that- that shit right there. That was the kind of verbiage he needed to remember.

Everything else aside. He realized where Fontaine had aimed his jab, and shrugged it off with all his newfound confidence.

"Since you're the one bringing Faith up." As if Demetri was even signing up to be in the running for 'guy that might not treat Faith like shit for a change'. Faith was his friend and they weren't like that. Leave it to Fontaine to be so enlightened and woke and be the one to reduce Faith to some object of banter. Actually kind of infuriating, now that Demetri's consciousness caught up with the rest of his emotions. He hadn't noticed the sudden ugly peeling back of his lips into a toothy snarl. So this was what all those white knight types felt. Only in Demetri's case it was the genuine shit, not neckbeard try harding.

"All she's really looking for is not you. So, you know. I got it in the bag." Fontaine's fault. He'd started it, Demetri was just playing the game. "Pass on your next fuck-up my way too, yeah? I can two-for-two on this 'not being the school's biggest jackass' brand." The bro thumbs up followed, almost a left hook right to pretty boy's chest.

Axel just kinda... watched. Bewildered. Was he just really drunk? Was he so drunk he was having really realistic hallucinations? Was that a thing that could happen when you were drunk? Probably not. Probably plenty of drugs that could cause that kind of thing around here, if he looked, but he'd kept his bottle close at hand. So probably not that.

But if he wasn't hallucinating, that meant Demetri had grown a spine, and both of those things ranked pretty highly in terms of impossibility.

Yeah, the Faith thing'd been a low blow. Probably wouldn't have brought it up in another circumstance. It was a long time ago, neither of them felt great about it in retrospect, and what the fuck was he doing weaponizing that, anyway? That was the kind of shit one of the football guys would pull. But he was probably only introspecting on it now cause somehow it didn't work. Caught him off guard for half a second, and then he kept on rolling. Did he already know? Had Faith talked about it? Seemed like a weird topic of conversation to follow with an incel-lite, but whatever.

Jesus, he was too drunk to follow this weird-ass bravado. If there was one guy he'd didn't expect to find defending a girl's honor it was probably this one, but man, more than anything it was just fucking infuriating to have him of all people taking the moral high ground. Like acting like a decent guy for five minutes canceled out four years of being a sniveling homophobic creep. In what world did he get to call himself good?

Not that Axel thought he was a shining example of morality or anything. The way that flaring heat in his stomach rose to his chest was a reminder of that, and when Demetri moved too close—didn't hit him, didn't try, but still, too close—Axel decided he was getting real fucking bored of this.

"Bad move."

He was already moving when the words left his lips, a half step forward for momentum, his right fist crashing forward with all the power he could put behind it, aimed directly at the smug face directly in front of him.

It connected. Something cracked. It wasn't his fist.

Axel turned on his heels as Demetri stumbled backward, scooped his second drink off the ground, and tossed a sarcastic wave over his shoulder as he headed toward the staircase. Behind him, something rumbled, something crashed. Something loud. Wasn't his problem, whatever it was. Pretty sure no one had seen what'd gone down, and if they did, who the fuck would defend Demetri Futscher?

Guys like him got what they deserved.

>> Axel Fontaine continued where he left off

Demetri didn't immediately notice. His triumphant ascent to sit upon the throne of nice guy- but not the bowels of the internet 'nice guy', Jesus- had played out in slow motion and the sudden forward blur of Fontaine's incoming hand had done much the same. Demetri was still thoroughly and unironically offended on Faith's behalf when his world suddenly turned to spit and blood.

His back hit the table as he stumbled, something careened audibly before brushing his cheek as he tumbled to earth.

The dry cracking sound that followed was an echo. His nose, the thing that had just shattered to raw pieces a couple of inches shy of the crown of his skull, he couldn't quite tell which was which.





"Wh-huh?? Oh- shit!"

"The fuck just happened?"
"Ohmygosh- hey, hey are you alright?"


"Duuude, the vase...!"

Demetri, belatedly, sobered up.

((Demetri Futscher was promptly kicked out of the party.

His story continued thereafter.))